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Power - Apparently, it's Evil

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Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
Hguoh said :
It's not that power makes you flawed/bad. When it comes to being flawed, everybody is. All power does is magnify what these flawed beings are capable of, which, in turn, makes their flaws more obvious and any errors more egregious.
Something is flawed if it deviates away from what it was designed to be. Did you intent to argue that humans are supposed to act a certain way?

Oh not at all. Merely that we are incapable of knowing everything, which enables them to make mistakes (cause unintended effects with their actions). In other words, the thing I am saying that we are flawed in comparison to is the ideal of perfection (which itself cannot be realized due to its very nature).
That's what I figured you were getting at but I just wanted to make sure :D

Anyways, here's an interesting thought experiment: It doesn't really mean much but it's just something I like to fiddle with.

Wouldn't you say that you are perfectly what you are? Only I am perfectly me. Thus in that sense, we are all perfect because we are all perfectly us.

17-Feb-2017 15:30:54

Hguoh

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
Hguoh said :
It's not that power makes you flawed/bad. When it comes to being flawed, everybody is. All power does is magnify what these flawed beings are capable of, which, in turn, makes their flaws more obvious and any errors more egregious.
Something is flawed if it deviates away from what it was designed to be. Did you intent to argue that humans are supposed to act a certain way?

Oh not at all. Merely that we are incapable of knowing everything, which enables them to make mistakes (cause unintended effects with their actions). In other words, the thing I am saying that we are flawed in comparison to is the ideal of perfection (which itself cannot be realized due to its very nature).
That's what I figured you were getting at but I just wanted to make sure :D

Anyways, here's an interesting thought experiment: It doesn't really mean much but it's just something I like to fiddle with.

Wouldn't you say that you are perfectly what you are? Only I am perfectly me. Thus in that sense, we are all perfect because we are all perfectly us.

Yes, yes, I've heard that one before. That being said, you only achieve that conundrum by limiting the term perfection to a more narrow set of categories per person (being themselves). So being perfect at being you does not consequently make you perfect overall. ;)

17-Feb-2017 18:52:01

Maiden China

Maiden China

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Cthris said :

becomes invisible, meets alien who grants wishes xiaoqing would be of the opinion that suicide is a decent option now
would you keep playing a game once you knew the cheat codes?
and becoming invisible doesn't put you outside society... I ould be invisible right now and you wouldn't know. But I will respond as if it would remove you from society

anyway, your... example-thingy is wrong. You go to the zoo and you will be forgiven for thinking the lion is rather nice... it never tries to kill you or eat you. But the reason it doesn't isn't because it doesn't want to, it's because it can't. Open the door, the lion eats you.
If the lion was 'good' you would open the door and the lion would be like 'how do you do?' and walk off into the sunset and quite probably starve since it's an obligatory carnivore

if you went to work every day, and one day your boss is like 'hey, we're not paying you anymore', would you keep working there? I will guess you wouldn't. All you've done in your scenario is removed the rewards for doing bad things... that doesn't suddenly make you a good person . You're jobless for a while and then your boss says 'hey, come back, I'll totally pay you again' and right away you're back to having a job/being evil (not that having a job is evil, it's a metaphor and a really weird one but go with it) Carn

17-Feb-2017 19:58:04

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

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Maiden China said :
Cthris said :

becomes invisible, meets alien who grants wishes xiaoqing would be of the opinion that suicide is a decent option
Okay fair enough. Perhaps Xiaoqing does commit suicide because he gets bored and can't see a way out of it :P but a rational person (not to say you aren't normally rational) would understand that they have a being who will give them anything they want, and what they want is to not be bored, thus they would ask the alien to make it so they never get bored....

Also keep in mind the logical outcome of my arguments is not that people are good, but that in isolation humans nature is to engage in inactivity (Which isn't good or bad)

Anyways, the point of being invisible wasn't to remove you from society. A society is an abstract concept that is completely arbitrary, that tries to categorize certain societal forces while excluding others. For example, we include human generated societal forces when animal based societal forces can be just as enduring.

The point was to remove any meaningful social forces that could coercion you into doing things. i.e. removing the Leviathan. Removing a person from society is a very poor way of trying to judge human nature because you are still not studying the subject of your study (human nature) in isolation because you still have coercive forces acting upon your variable. This is basic science. If you want to study gravity, you would want to remove as many other mechanical forces, such as magnetism, inertia etc. because they interfere with your study of your variable. Thus, the only correct way to study human nature is in isolation.

Your zoo problem has the same problem as Hobbes. You're putting a being/a variable in an environment with other variable i.e. coercive forces such as the lion wanting to or not wanting to eat you. All that scenario is going to tell you about is that scenario not about human nature.

17-Feb-2017 20:36:48 - Last edited on 17-Feb-2017 21:18:00 by Cthris

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Maiden China said :

if you went to work every day, and one day your boss is like 'hey, we're not paying you anymore', would you keep working there? I will guess you wouldn't. All you've done in your scenario is removed the rewards for doing bad things... that doesn't suddenly make you a good person . You're jobless for a while and then your boss says 'hey, come back, I'll totally pay you again' and right away you're back to having a job/being evil (not that having a job is evil, it's a metaphor and a really weird one but go with it)
My point wasn't to say that people were good, and I think you missed the point of my thought experiment.

I didn't remove the rewards from doing bad things, I removed the necessity for any action other than asking the alien for what you want to show you that human nature is not what causes people to do good or bad things, but the environment and the needs it imposes on humans is the causes humans to act good or bad.

Human nature is inactivity.

If I was the invisible dude, and I could fulfill any wish I would ask the alien to make me eternally wholly and absolutely happy and I would never need nor ask the alien for anything because for the rest of time I would be perfectly content with my own situation.

17-Feb-2017 20:40:28 - Last edited on 17-Feb-2017 20:47:25 by Cthris

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
Hguoh said :
It's not that power makes you flawed/bad. When it comes to being flawed, everybody is. All power does is magnify what these flawed beings are capable of, which, in turn, makes their flaws more obvious and any errors more egregious.
Something is flawed if it deviates away from what it was designed to be. Did you intent to argue that humans are supposed to act a certain way?

Oh not at all. Merely that we are incapable of knowing everything, which enables them to make mistakes (cause unintended effects with their actions). In other words, the thing I am saying that we are flawed in comparison to is the ideal of perfection (which itself cannot be realized due to its very nature).
That's what I figured you were getting at but I just wanted to make sure :D

Anyways, here's an interesting thought experiment: It doesn't really mean much but it's just something I like to fiddle with.

Wouldn't you say that you are perfectly what you are? Only I am perfectly me. Thus in that sense, we are all perfect because we are all perfectly us.

Yes, yes, I've heard that one before. That being said, you only achieve that conundrum by limiting the term perfection to a more narrow set of categories per person (being themselves). So being perfect at being you does not consequently make you perfect overall. ;)

Am I correct in assuming that being perfectly overall by your definition would be to be perfectly every other thing? In that sense, the universe would be perfect because the universe is perfectly what it is, and what it is is everything.

17-Feb-2017 20:44:39

Hguoh

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
Am I correct in assuming that being perfectly overall by your definition would be to be perfectly every other thing? In that sense, the universe would be perfect because the universe is perfectly what it is, and what it is is everything.

Almost. Perfection isn't limited by reality or logic (hence why it is inherently unrealizable). Even if you choose to use the universe as your example, that still excludes everything that is not (aka: does not exist) and all the qualities associated with that.

Also, the universe may include may be perfect at being itself and includes ants that are perfect at being ants, but that does not make the universe itself perfect at being an ant.

Edit: In my example though, I am referring more toward the perceived perfection in being omniscient (knowing everything such that you can never possibly make a mistake). Of course, knowing you are omniscient is also an inherent impossibility as you can't know if you don't know something. So I guess you could term that the ideal of perfect knowledge of everything that is, was, or ever will be if you want to get specific

17-Feb-2017 20:57:24 - Last edited on 17-Feb-2017 21:08:08 by Hguoh

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Hguoh said :
Cthris said :
Am I correct in assuming that being perfectly overall by your definition would be to be perfectly every other thing? In that sense, the universe would be perfect because the universe is perfectly what it is, and what it is is everything.

Almost. Perfection isn't limited by reality or logic (hence why it is inherently unrealizable). Even if you choose to use the universe as your example, that still excludes everything that is not (aka: does not exist) and all the qualities associated with that.

Also, the universe may include may be perfect at being itself and includes ants that are perfect at being ants, but that does not make the universe itself perfect at being an ant.

Edit: In my example though, I am referring more toward the perceived perfection in being omniscient (knowing everything such that you can never possibly make a mistake). Of course, knowing you are omniscient is also an inherent impossibility as you can't know if you don't know something. So I guess you could term that the ideal of perfect knowledge of everything that is, was, or ever will be if you want to get specific

Lol I know this doesn't super relate to your example. I've been just bouncing ideas right now, but:

Things that do not exist have no qualities, hence why they do not exists. Therefore the universe cannot lack them. Also your ant example is flawed because it fails a nominalist account. A nominalist would argue that the problem in your example isn't that the universe isn't perfect, but that your idea of an ant doesn't reflect reality. There isn't ants, there is only sets of composite parts that the human experience has labeled as ants.

The universe is always perfectly the set of composite parts that makes up itself is it not?

17-Feb-2017 21:17:07

Hguoh

Hguoh

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Cthris said :
Lol I know this doesn't super relate to your example. I've been just bouncing ideas right now, but:

Things that do not exist have no qualities, hence why they do not exists. Therefore the universe cannot lack them. Also your ant example is flawed because it fails a nominalist account. A nominalist would argue that the problem in your example isn't that the universe isn't perfect, but that your idea of an ant doesn't reflect reality. There isn't ants, there is only sets of composite parts that the human experience has labeled as ants.

The universe is always perfectly the set of composite parts that makes up itself is it not?

Even if you remove the labels, the amount/type/proportion of composite parts that make up the ant and the universe verifiably differ. For example, an ant will be made out of far fewer composite parts of more limited types of parts than the entire universe is even though the ant is included within the universe (in other words, while you might have a bacteria in your gut, you aren't just that bacteria as you also have a number of other bits to you).

So yes, the universe is perfect at being itself, but it is not a perfect ant.

And just because something doesn't exist does not mean it has no qualities (ex: dragons don't exist, but we can still list off qualities for them).

17-Feb-2017 21:26:34

Cthris
Dec Member 2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Hguoh said :

Even if you remove the labels, the amount/type/proportion of composite parts that make up the ant and the universe verifiably differ. For example, an ant will be made out of far fewer composite parts of more limited types of parts than the entire universe is even though the ant is included within the universe (in other words, while you might have a bacteria in your gut, you aren't just that bacteria as you also have a number of other bits to you).

So yes, the universe is perfect at being itself, but it is not a perfect ant.

And just because something doesn't exist does not mean it has no qualities (ex: dragons don't exist, but we can still list off qualities for them).

Like I said, your phantasm of an ant does not correspond to reality. It's an arbitrary cut-off of composite parts. It doesn't demonstrate that the universe is lacking anything, thus it wouldn't prove that the universe is not perfect.

Dragons do exist though, as phantasms in our mind. A phantasm has a place in reality because there is a mechanical explanation for its existence. Anything that you can think of is not a thing that does not exist because it corresponds to some mechanical thing in reality.

The universe is perfect overall because it lacks nothing. You're trying to argue that the universe is not overall perfect because it is not limited in its existence, which is contrary to what perfection is. It's like trying to argue that something cannot be infinite because it cannot be finite.

17-Feb-2017 21:43:54

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